Over 1,000 Attendees Attend MLK Labor Breakfast

01/26/2018

Last Saturday, we held our annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Breakfast that drew in a crowd of over 1,000 community leaders, labor leaders, and elected officials. This year’s keynote speaker was Vanita Gupta. As President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Vanita Gupta is carrying on the groundbreaking work she did under President Obama as head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. The growing breadth of Civil Rights in 2018 honors what Dr. King achieved, and it was the theme of this year’s Breakfast.

Rusty Hicks, President of the LA Fed, highlighted that Civil Rights in 2018 is more than black and white. “In 2018, we won’t let a Supreme Court case like Janus tell us we can’t have a voice on the job. We’ll train more organizers to preserve a worker’s fundamental right to form a union. We won’t sit quietly by while Republicans in Congress take away our healthcare and give more tax breaks to the rich. We’ll help more union members to run for public office, take back the House in 2018, and send every last anti-worker Republican home for good,” he said.

Juana Melara, TIME’s Person of the Year and a worker delegation of three women (Danielle Jones, Emma Worthington, and Lori Condinus), also introduced Maria Elena Durazo, General Vice President of UNITE HERE and shed light on the issue of sexual harassment on the job.

Juana said, “Like most housekeepers, I have been harassed by male guests more times than I can count. Men have exposed themselves to me, put their hands on me and asked me to perform sexual acts on them. I am here today because I refused to take it. I fought back. I want women to know that they are not alone. Together we can stop the abuse.”